In the period
following World War II, there were men's jobs, and there were women's jobs. But the Civil
Rights Act, banning job discrimination, was passed in 1964, and in the ensuing decade the
federal government took a number of steps to further open up the labor market for women.

Nevertheless,
in the mid-1970s many women were still reporting difficulty in being hired for certain
kinds of jobs. Sociologist Richard Levinson conducted a field experiment that demonstrated
some of the discrimination women were facing.1

Levinson had
male and female undergraduate sociology students make job inquiries in response to 256
classified advertisements. The jobs were categorized as "male" (security guard,
truck driver, car sales, and so on) or "female" (receptionist, hostess, cosmetic
sales, and so on).

Working in
male-female pairs, one partner made a telephone inquiry about a "sex
inappropriate" jobˇfor example, a man asking about a receptionist position or a
woman asking about a truck driver job.

About 30
minutes later, the other partner called about the same job. This time the person was
"sex appropriate"ˇthe woman called about the receptionist job or the man called
about the truck driver opening.

The students
were instructed to be polite and to use identical words in their inquiries.

Levinson
found clear-cut discrimination in 35% of the cases. The sex-inappropriate caller might be
told that the person doing the hiring was out of town or that the position had already
been filled. However, when the sex-appropriate caller phoned a half hour later, he or she
might be told that the position was still open or was even encouraged to come in for an
interview.

Ambiguous
discrimination was found in another 27% of the cases. This type of discrimination ranged
from expressions of surprise to subtle attempts on the part of employers to discourage the
sex-inappropriate caller from applying for the job.

A replication
of this study over a decade later found that these forms of sex discrimination still
existed, although they were not as common as they had been in Levinson's study.2
Men and women in the paid labor force are still treated differently today.